A New Picture
by likeiloveyouforpussies
Summary: A brief look at what Carol and Therese's future may look like some time after the movie, with both points of view.
1. Therese

Therese made no attempt to conceal the tiny, amused smile which had appeared on her lips, knowing that it wouldn't be interpreted as a sign of derision. Standing between the coffee table and one of the sofas, with her hands bunched up in front of her like a good girl, she followed the dash of yellow and lavender with her eyes. She found it amusing, the way Carol often demonstrated her concern by chastising her in inoffensive, little bouts. Upon arriving home, Therese had squeezed Carol's outreached fingers without giving it any thought, but it elicited a loud, shocked gasp in the blonde woman, who had risen from the bottle-green sofa as if stung. Straightening her skirt, Carol had purposefully marched into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and embarked on one of her breathy reprimands, declaring it outrageous that Therese didn't own a pair of gloves, that Therese's hands were so cold that she could probably warm them up by sticking them in the icebox.

Remaining where she was, in the center of the apartment, she let the amusement caused by Carol's indignation translate into an overflowing surge of emotion. They read each other, she thought, without having to deconstruct each other, without having to line up and analyze all the little parts separately, excruciatingly. Such was the difference, she supposed, between constantly struggling -and failing- to grasp a word here and there (something which happened with other people) and speaking each other's language.

"Sit. Drink this." With resolute force, Carol set down the tray with all the tea paraphernalia, making the white china rattle slightly.

That was one of the homey sounds which gave her peace, along with the snap of Carol's lighter, the clinking of tumblers in the cupboard, the dull thud of Carol's jewel case when it shut, and the needle touching a record late in the afternoon. More comforting than any of those sounds was perhaps the opposite: the sudden disappearance of the tap-tap-tap of Carol's heels, which meant that she had slipped out of her shoes and was padding around the apartment in her stockings.

Their home. It was both a place and a person, she'd discovered, being someone who had never really had a home. For Therese, there was an overwhelming clarity in being with Carol which she had felt from the very first moment, like an inevitably cosmic sensation, even before she'd known to label it as love. It was the clarity of saying "yes" to every proposition: sitting across from Carol in a restaurant right before she'd pensively called her "a strange girl", clutching the large phone receiver in the hallway, or sitting on the terrace of her building, feeling the relief wash over her at the prospect of their road trip. How taken aback -disappointed, hurt, and almost indignant- she'd been when Carol had informed her that she would be leaving for a while, wherever her car would take her. Not even in retrospect did Therese want to think of it as some form of entitlement – nothing as aggressive as that. Being in Carol's company had been, from the beginning, like the discovery another bodily function, a new way of devoting not only her senses, but all that she was, for she would have done anything for Carol.

Only when Therese had taken several sips of the smoky beverage -her fingers curled around the cup to warm them up-, did Carol visibly relax: combing back a few yellow strands of hair using her pinkie, she lit a cigarette, reclined on the sofa, and sighed. And when the exhaled cloud of smoke broke against Therese's shoulder and engulfed her, she set down her teacup, responding to a wordless invitation. She leaned in, burying her face in the neck of Carol's lilac sweater, and felt the woman's body welcoming her: sighing again, as if to make even more room for Therese. She breathed in Carol's perfume, which had been greatly missed all day, and moved her hands round her waist to press on the small of her back.

On one occasion she had refrained from saying "yes", and still it hadn't been a clear-cut "no", but an "I don't think so". It had nevertheless taken everything in her to utter those words, for they implied continuing to live as she had lived during those endless months without Carol: as an ascetic, refusing to indulge her senses in the thing they desired the most, grasping onto some sense of control. It had been comparably easier to exist frugally all those years before Carol, for she hadn't known what she'd lacked, or that she'd lacked anything at all, just feeling that permeating feeling of dissatisfaction like a bad taste in her mouth: a reminder that there was something not entirely right with her. However, she had emerged from the abrupt end of their road trip and from those months a stronger person; after all, anyone could be a Spartan, provided they'd never known anything apart from bleakness and hardship. Therese didn't feel childlike anymore, nor a prisoner of a two-dimensional, misty city. "Is that what comes from getting away from me?" Carol had asked in the bar of the Ritz Tower, at once attempting irony and delivering a bittersweet jab against herself. Her sadness had bled through her words and her carefully composed facade, as it sometimes did, and only then had Therese uttered a firm "no".

She had found a place in the world (or rather, dug herself a little nook among a homogeneous mass of white-shirted, chain-smoking, strident newsmen), and lost some of the old, all-encompassing sense of disconnectedness, along with most of her wide-eyed gaze. But she would have never voluntarily relinquished being with Carol in that desperate, tail-chasing trip, nor had she truly found that Carol could be blamed. The worst part was that she had understood Carol's impossible situation, yet the knowledge that they'd both gone against themselves had first broken her, then haunted her, and finally hardened her.

It felt like a long time ago, even though less than a year had gone by since she had pushed out of the backseat of Carol's Packard -driven by Abby-, feeling sicker than she'd ever felt, later realizing that it had been a somatic reaction to the pain of having lost Carol. Once home, she had gingerly developed every single picture she'd taken during their journey, grasping at shadows to obtain shadows of what she'd felt, of what she'd had: staring at inky blurs floating in liquid while they slowly composed the shapes of the woman she loved. And, naturally, when that proved insufficient, she'd dared to stand on her tiptoes and drop a coin into the hallway payphone. "I miss you," she'd said, and then again, "I miss you," softly, into the black receiver, when Carol had already hung up on her, with the dial tone as her sole listener.

Carol's hand rubbed her gently between the shoulders and then moved upwards: from the back of her neck to her hair. Responding immediately, Therese shivered, and lifted her head when she felt Carol shifting underneath her – she was reaching out to deposit her cigarette in the ashtray, so that her fingers were now free to trace the skin under Therese's chin and stroke her cheek. Their eyes locked, and Therese felt another jolt of emotion which made her insides tighten and jump. She now knew to recognize this as a sign of desire, something certainly unknown to her before Carol, and very much tangible to her -albeit in the most visceral of ways- when they were getting to know each other. Back then, it had been more akin to blindly hurling herself towards that brilliant source of light and heat, like a moth, unable to verbalize how or why, but without struggling to figure out an explanation. She'd had no reserves, none of the past chronic unpreparedness to take steps forward she'd felt with Richard. On the contrary, what she'd found impossibly harrowing had been the inability to do anything. The worst feeling of all, she'd discovered, was the passive and eternal wait for time to heal a wound.

"I've missed you," Therese whispered, grateful and completely aware of the fact that she wouldn't have to pronounce those words in the present tense again.

There was a slight change in Carol's expression – a softening of her features, a glint in her eyes. If she set her mind to it, Therese could write a thick volume's worth of tiny gestures and glances of varying length, of pitch and tone of voice – things which were imperceptible to the world but earthshaking for them. They had never stopped seducing each other, or so it seemed to her; whether deliberately or unconsciously, Carol stirred her with her mere presence. At that precise moment, however, inside the home they had made for themselves, it was safe to do much more. Carol raised her head and kissed her, enveloping Therese's lips with her own, tightly, as if she didn't wish to let go of them.

The way Carol's fingers sifted through her hair invariably weakened her, but in the manner of a wave: receding only to move forward. Therese pushed her upper body against Carol's -their breasts breathing and moving as one- and she parted her mouth to deepen the kiss. Her hands closed around Carol's sweater instinctively, revealing the warm skin underneath it, and her fingertips started drawing abstract shapes up and down the woman's sides. With an inflaming, low-pitched moan, Carol sat up and unbuttoned Therese's jacket, exposing her clavicles before bowing her head and covering them with slow, wet kisses. Therese gasped and arched her back, grabbing a handful of blonde hair. Their bodies were arranged in opposed postures, which enabled them to be much closer – Therese all but sitting on Carol's lap.

Harshly, suddenly, the doorbell rang, and Carol let out a muffled chuckle, her lips still pressed against Therese's collarbone. "You made me forget Abby and Shirley were coming over."

"I forgot, too." Therese tried to rearrange her long skirt, which had sprawled over Carol's legs. She blinked in the golden illumination of the room like an astonished child waking up from a dream, with the rude, electrical ringing still in her ears. "I thought I'd have time for a shower."

"Later," Carol said, firmly, but winking at her as she walked past her towards the door, casually fixing her clothes and her hair.

Therese stood up and rebuttoned her jacket, in spite of being sure that her cheeks were on fire and of how flustered she felt. From that spot she could see a section of the front door and of Carol, and heard the usual sounds of guests arriving: high-pitched greetings, minor complaints about the weather, the traffic, or the scarcity of parking spaces, and the rustling of coats. She picked up the tray with her forgotten tea and brought it into the kitchen, for she could see that Carol had bought copious things to drink and prepared enough hors d'ouvres and finger sandwiches, but hadn't yet carried them out to the living room.

"Where's Therese? Oh, there you are!" Abby, who was about to enter the kitchen but had her head turned towards Carol, almost bumped into the refilled tray. She delivered a peck to Therese's cheek and let her pass, already rummaging her purse for a cigarette. In any case, her abilities lied in mixing drinks, which she set out to do straightaway, with the cigarette confidently poised between her lips and commending them on the apartment's latest modifications at the same time.

For a moment, the four of them shared the same few square feet in a confusing coming and going of food, glassware, and greetings. Shirley squeezed Therese's arm and kissed her cheek as well before helping her. Even though they didn't know each other all that well, Therese believed she liked her, with her imposing height and her curly mane of red hair, because she appeared to counter her striking appearance with a warm voice and a mellow prosody.

They settled in the living room after an initial fuss about where the napkins were and which records they should play, with Abby and Shirley occupying the green sofa and Carol gesturing for Therese to sit with her on the pinkish loveseat next to the record player. She noticed that someone -probably Carol- had poured her a glass of white wine, which was her preference, and she drank deeply after they had clinked their glasses and giggled through a variety of toasts. Therese wriggled closer to Carol and smiled up at her when she felt the woman's fingers stroking and parting her hair. She thought about that single kiss to the cheek, how the few times Therese had met some of Abby's acquaintances -women like them-, they had greeted one another that way.

The night she'd felt hollow except for a cold, creeping loneliness, the night she'd understood that she could never let go of Carol and that nobody else could ever measure up, when she'd gone searching for her at the Oak Room, Therese had remained completely still, trying to catch a glimpse of her through the blur of dark suits sluggishly strolling about. She'd experienced a sort of calm impatience, as in those interminable seconds when one had to wait for a cloud to move aside in order to feel the heat of the sun once again. And then, after spotting each other, Therese had had the serene certainty that it would always be Carol. Their growing smiles had been more determinant than any signature or anything anyone could ever put on paper, yet invisible to everybody else there. "Hello, darling," Carol had said with mild surprise, when Therese had approached the table, as if nothing monumental had just taken place, then stood up and kissed her cheek while the others made room for her. "I'm so delighted you were able to make it." In the midst of a waterfall of emotions, Therese had admired Carol for being able to speak at all, but that supposedly meaningless gesture, that kiss, enclosed so many things, like the sharing of a secret.

In most ways, they were just like everybody else, but Carol had chastised her the minute Therese had attempted to separate herself from "those people" who looked a certain way. Not that they weren't special, but they were only special to themselves. The world was full of people like them and all kinds of people, but weren't they all inherently the same? Therese had known that Carol was right and, in a way, she'd already understood that the night of Phil's party, when she'd met Genevieve Cantrell. Weathered, and worldlier than when she'd first encountered Carol, Therese had recognized the layered interplay of signals and glances, the young woman's interest in her, and hadn't judged them as alien to her. The fact that she'd felt cornered and had locked herself inside the bathroom was a different matter -perhaps one of timing-, and an insurmountable one, for the sight of other couples doing the commonest things in their own little bubbles had provoked a specific yearning within, which nobody else could have filled: the acceptance of the knowledge that she hadn't stopped loving Carol.

She snuggled closer to Carol, stole her cigarette, and grinned at the woman's mock-protest ("You thief!") as she puffed away. Therese then captured Carol's free hand with her own and interlocked their fingers, earning an almost imperceptible, joyful squeal from the blonde. With the exception of occasional, humorous remarks from Carol, they were all listening to Abby as she recounted a long-winded, topsy-turvy tale about a romantic beach picnic she and Shirley had attempted to have on the windiest, most tempestuous of days.

"The damned blanket kept blowing in our faces, along with half the sand on the beach, and this one-" Abby nudged Shirley, who'd turned away because her own laughter had caused her a coughing fit, "this one was on her hands and knees, saying 'It's not that bad', 'It's not that bad', over and over to make me feel better, until I told her to eat her sand sandwich."

Enjoying the vibration of Carol's abdomen when she laughed, Therese looked at Abby and wondered if she'd ever seen her so chipper. Mordant and incisive, yes, and good with an audience, entirely capable of holding her own, but Therese believed she'd detected a new easiness in her demeanor and even in her laughter – something which no doubt had plenty to do with Shirley. Perhaps, however, it was also about Carol, about seeing Carol happier and living her life instead of boxed in as if in a dollhouse, however much she missed sharing her daughter's day-to-day. Therese had grown to appreciate Abby since the days when she'd felt their bond left her on the outside looking in, suspecting that there would be parts of Carol she'd never be able to access, whereas Abby did have a key. Now, at least, she no longer had the nagging sensation of being a little girl watching two adults interact, turning her head this way and that like the spectator of a tennis match, wishing to help but unequipped to do so, which had everything to do with her own growth and not because there had been any change in Carol and Abby's friendship.

Shirley pointed at the wall between the kitchen and their bedroom door, which was almost entirely covered in framed photographs, and asked if they were all Therese's. With difficulty, because Carol was gently tugging at the hair on the back of her head, Therese nodded. She liked the simple presentation she'd chosen for each of them -a thin, tarnished silver frame and a black passe-partout-, since most were nothing more than snapshots of the city, instances of humanity squeezing between the buildings which, for whichever reason, had caught her eye. Carol's proud expression whenever somebody mentioned her photography always made her giddy with bliss. There were, in fact, several pictures of Carol on display, including one Therese had taken from the window of their apartment: Carol making her way down Madison Avenue, impossible to miss or mistake for anybody else even at a distance. One which wasn't there but in their bedroom, on Carol's dressing table, showed Carol dressed with flair but kneeling on the ground to get closer to Rindy's height, and they were both looking down at something on the child's tiny hand, with Carol touching her daughter's fingertips with her own.

Possessed by a sudden urge, Therese rushed to fetch her camera, and attempted to photograph the three women as naturally and discreetly as possible, with the smoke blooming from their cigarettes providing a sort of mysterious hue. Her intention was to portray the intimacy between them, their rapport, which commonly went unnoticed. She was accustomed to being the observant eye and had very often felt invisible, but Carol had looked at her and had seen her, and would never forget that she was there. That her presence could affect Carol so much, that she could make such a difference, impressed Therese still.

"Abby," Carol said, staring directly into Therese's eyes and gingerly removing the camera from between her hands. "Would you take our picture?"


	2. Carol

Carol combed back one of her curls behind her ear and tilted her head towards Therese, who was nestled between her side and her arm. She surrounded the girl's shoulders, looked at the lens, and smiled. Everyone remained frozen for several seconds, however, when nothing happened, she glanced at Therese, wondering if she wasn't smiling. With her hand poised as if she were holding an invisible camera, Therese was subtly indicating with her index finger where Abby had to press, and still, Carol didn't hear the familiar mechanical sizzle of the camera.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked, speaking through her teeth, her smile congealed.

"I'm waiting for you to kiss," answered Abby, with mock impatience.

Throwing her head back, Carol let out a string of heartfelt laughter. She peered at Therese again and saw that she was smiling widely and slowly shaking her head in incredulity, and that was when Abby chose to press the button.

"What the hell kind of picture was that?" Unable to minify her gleeful smile, Carol crossed one leg over the other and reached over to retrieve her golden lighter from the coffee table.

"Come on, where's the fun in posing?" Abby set down the camera, apparently pleased with her own cleverness.

"I agree." remarked Therese, with a smirk.

"Well, if the brilliant photographer says so..." Carol returned the smirk and lit another cigarette. "That's that."

Where was the fun in posing, indeed, she mused. One was so used to doing it, though, that it was often harder to act naturally: after becoming such an adept at walking around with a veil covering one's eyes, it was easy to forget that it could actually be removed. For as long as she could remember, there had been a kind of barrier acting as a filter between her true core and the persona which met the outside world's expectations, with her consciousness dallying between the two of them: for instance, in the past, becoming suddenly aware of her own solitude in a roomful of people at some agonizing dinner party.

Navigating a society of surfaces was like being an expert ice skater slashing figure eights on a flat, solid layer of ice. One could keep it up forever, and many did, since it was as straightforward as painting by numbers, provided one's surface didn't crack. She had always maneuvered rather competently, but she'd witnessed it happening to a number women in the shape of brief disturbances which had to be quickly stifled: a glass being smashed against the floor, a sharp "No, I won't!" or "I don't want to!" followed by a hissed command for the woman in question to lower her voice, and a shuffling of feet – for they were always removed from the room, those women, taken somewhere where they wouldn't be seen or heard. The fact that other people considered their reactions as out of the blue (because the triggers for those reactions were invisible to them) meant that they were passed off as nerves, fatigue, or inebriation ("She's had too much to drink – went straight to her head"). Everything, it seemed, was always passed off as something else – something blander, without edges, so it could be swallowed or assimilated easily.

People were generally not very accepting of individuals with baggage, preferring the company of those who had blanks to be filled: submissive beings onto whom they could project whichever traits they considered a proper lady, wife, mother should have. And then there was Therese, to whom she'd given a practically empty suitcase as a Christmas present, a suitcase which had only been empty in appearance; in truth, Carol had been about to fill it to the brim with her own baggage.

She finished off her drink and rested her head on the back of the loveseat, feeling slightly guilty for zoning in and out of Shirley's recounting of a work-related anecdote. Her eyes were intermittently watching Therese, who had taken off her jacket, set it aside, and folded it with care. It was possible, she'd discovered, to be at once pleased with the fact that Therese had warmed up enough to remain in her short-sleeved shirt, and to feel a jounce of arousal, for her body recalled having kissed that V-shaped neckline just a short while before. As her fingers traveled up the concave line that was the inside of Therese's bent arm, Carol remembered being told about her encounter with that girl -Genevieve something or other-, of how she had approached Therese and how Therese had excused herself. Carol had teased her a little about it, wondering if she'd liked the girl at all, but had mostly found it comical that Therese had hidden inside a bathroom because, quite simply, Therese was the bravest person she had ever met.

Late one night, in bed, around the time they'd finished moving all of Therese's belongings into the apartment, Therese had countered that it was Carol who was courageous. But Therese had been the one to face the enormous weight of Carol's baggage the first time she'd visited her house and, instead of stealing away, her wondrous reaction had been to say that she wanted to know more: a cautious "I want to ask you things" over the phone. After an initial amusement and curiosity, Carol had soon perceived that that unwavering, quietly strong girl wished to help her, to do things for her, and it had disarmed her completely. Moreover, Therese had wanted to know her – they'd both wanted to get to know each other, as if the mysterious, ethereal sense of understanding each other had only heightened the need for materializing it. Carol had in turn pleaded for her to ask her things, because she'd felt so alone that she'd started to believe that she was slowly fading, blown away little by little like a statue of sand.

How to explain that Therese's mere presence and her clear acceptance of Carol's propositions to continue seeing each other had helped her to feel more solid, more real, as the vacuous world surrounding her rapidly crumbled? "How are you possible?" Carol had whispered to her more than once in the amber cocoon of their bedroom. The more Therese had looked at her and the more Carol had allowed herself to react to her, the more she'd felt like she was recovering an old, buried sense of self. No wonder Therese was a photographer, and no wonder Carol's present for her had been a camera. Stuck to the wall of Therese's kitchen, Carol had seen an image of herself taken from a certain distance, seeing herself as Therese had seen her: with an uncertain half-smile on her lips, like the possibility of a promise, or a yet uncooked feeling. She had inspected herself from that new point of view, disregarding Therese's self-criticism, for she'd inhabited a universe where practically everyone made a point of telling you how you looked -be it with excitement, with concern, or comparing you with others-, but few people truly meant it, and fewer people still attempted to really see you. "No, don't," Therese had protested when Carol had been about to switch off the lamp that night in Waterloo. "I want to see you," she'd added, and Carol had let the amazement wash over her, asking herself for the millionth time what went on inside that astounding head of Therese's, and if she actually knew that those were the most perfect words she could have chosen to utter.

"No, no, leave it." Therese gestured for Shirley to stop piling up plates and glasses, but the redhead pretended not to hear her, and marched into the kitchen with a smug smile on her face and with Therese trailing behind, still asking her to leave it.

Glancing at Abby, Carol chuckled and shook her head. "Well, I guess that's you every single day."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Abby, pretending to ponder about it with a faraway stare.

The four of them moved towards the entrance of the apartment at the sluggish pace of guests who didn't particularly wish to leave and of hosts who didn't want to usher them too hastily. Huddled around the front door, they chatted about doing this again soon, in the manner of every single group of people who met once in a while, with the exception that they were being honest. Carol felt so much joy and comfort in having both her friend and Therese with her that she could only compare it to the warmth of Christmas.

"Goodbye, my darlings," Carol slid over to kiss Shirley's cheek while Abby did the same with Therese, and then they changed places, shifting with difficulty in the reduced space.

A lingering cocktail of perfumes, caused by the distribution of coats and scarves, descended upon them once they shut the front door behind their friends. Therese inched closer to her and kissed her, slowly letting go of her lips, with her hands just above Carol's waist.

"Is Abby hiding somewhere with a camera?" she asked softly, touching the girl's nose with her own.

Therese briefly stroked her cheek with the back of her fingers. "I'm going to take that shower."

She watched the dark-haired girl walk down the corridor and enter their bedroom, and then realized what she'd said; offhand, jocose remarks about people spying on them would simply never be very funny. Following Therese's footsteps, Carol paused before the closed door of their unused, spare bedroom and pictured herself opening it and seeing it transformed into the bedroom of a child, a small bundle of a girl asleep on the bed. Why would she decorate it, to visit it and make a fuss over it as if it were a mausoleum? But maybe someday Harge would allow Rindy to stay, and then together they'd decide the decoration of her room. At least she saw Rindy enough that she would not forget that Carol was her mother and enough for Carol to know who or what Rindy was talking about without needing to interrupt her to ask for further contextualization.

Upon reaching the bedroom, she heard the sound of running water and spotted Therese's clothes neatly folded on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. She dropped her earrings, necklace, and bracelets into her jewel case and, as always, paused to look at her photograph with Rindy -her favorite-, which Therese had taken when they'd gone to a park. She took off her clothes, placing them next to Therese's in a small pile. The smallest things appeared to make her smile dreamily now, such as the sight of her shoes aligned with Therese's on the floor, for there had been a time when something so simple had been nothing but a chimera. At first, she'd done the opposite of keeping Therese away from the chronic intricacies of her life, but had released her impromptu when there had been nowhere to run. During her weakest moments, she'd wished she'd asked Therese to wait, but it had all seemed too hopeless when she'd sat down to write that letter. And so Therese had flown, so that, when they'd met at the Ritz Tower, apart from bursting with pride for her, Carol had felt insecure – more than on previous occasions when she'd proposed her something. "It's nice of you to see me," Carol had said, right before sitting at the small table for, if she'd been trained for anything, it was to move behind that vapid and dishonest -but safe- filter of propriety. "Don't say that," Therese had responded. It had been offensive, Carol admitted, to reduce the importance of their seeing each other to that nonchalant, formulaic phrase.

Stark naked, Carol tiptoed into the bathroom's icy floor and glanced at their robes, which hung side by side from two pegs on the inside of the door. She opened a fraction of the coral shower curtain and stepped inside the tub, thankful for the hot cloud of vapor which welcomed her. Therese was standing directly below the shower head, facing the wall, and she smiled at her without startling and without turning around completely, her dark hair plastered to her forehead and temples like a cute plane pilot cap. Setting free the hunger which had been building up all evening, Carol approached her, reaching the bell-shaped rainfall, and pressed her lips to the back of Therese's neck. She made her way down the girl's vertebrae with devotion, as if they were the cobblestones forming the path which would lead her home.

"God, that feels..." muttered Therese, placing her hands flat on the tiled wall and bowing her head, but Carol was already grabbing her hips and turning her around.

She kissed round Therese's navel and moved upwards, enjoying the texture of her skin with the constant, warm layer of water covering it. Her parted mouth slid effortlessly over the brunette's breasts, and she made a point of avoiding the girl's nipples for as long as she could bear it. Grinning when she felt Therese's hand gripping her hair, Carol pushed up against her with her thigh, earning an unabashed moan which echoed through the bathroom. Her fingers dug into Therese's lower back, keeping her propped against the wall as she started moving her hips and her thigh. She delivered a series of lingering bites to Therese's breasts and dragged her tongue underneath and between them, finally arriving to her nipples. She took her time tending to them, drawing unending circles, and releasing them only to start again. Meanwhile, her right hand departed from Therese's back and squeezed the inside of her thigh before crawling upwards. She leveled her head with Therese and kissed her, reveling in the way the girl attempted to communicate her desperation through the urgency of her lips and her tongue.

But Carol knew everything about the language of Therese's body; she listened to the hypnotic hum of that skin and knew how to act accordingly. Her fingers moved between Therese's legs and brushed her lips, gasping at how good it felt to touch her. The brunette bit and sucked on her lower lip, wanting to incite her further, and Carol pressed her fingers to her lips, slipping between them with ease. Her fingertips became instantly coated with a warm wetness which had nothing to do with the hot water from the shower, and she traced shapeless, infinite shapes with Therese clinging to her, biting Carol's neck, and emitting the most delicious, nonsensical sounds against her skin.

"I want..." mumbled Therese, between deep but hurried breaths.

"Yes?"

"I want to touch you. I've been waiting all day... to touch you."

"Have you?" she asked teasingly, kissing the rivulets of water which broke off at Therese's jaw. "Let's go to bed."

They climbed out of the bathtub and scrubbed their bodies and their hair with a couple of towels, quickly, to get over with such a formality. Meanwhile, Therese's eyes never left her own. There was nothing coy about Therese, despite appearances or misjudged first impressions from other people. Her vitality sparked Carol's every day, and aroused an instinct in her which had been dormant since forever. For all her ruminations about how Therese looked at her, more often than not, Carol found herself looking at Therese with renewed wonder.

She followed Therese's adorably tousled hair into the bedroom and they both hurried to get into bed, damp as they were. Carol loathed the idea of Therese being cold, especially at home, and she pulled the covers over their heads and got as close to the girl as she possibly could in a tangle of limbs. After a moment or two of breathy giggles with their faces buried in the curves of each other's necks, Therese's lips searched for hers. Gently pushing Carol against the mattress, the brunette moved on top of her, and Carol felt her own legs part with a will of their own to make room for Therese's hips.

The coolness of their skin, it seemed, had already faded, for Carol cupped Therese's face and found that her cheeks were burning. A groan caught in her throat when Therese lowered her head to kiss her breasts and she was able to feel the vibration of her muffled sounds. Her back arched as soon as Therese's mouth began designing a path of her own, a thorough itinerary down her body, with plenty of stops, not unlike they'd done months and months before in her car.

Therese placed a warm hand below Carol's navel and sucked on her lips with what could only be described as gluttony. She traced them with her tongue briefly before pushing into her center, stroking her clit with an ardent rhythm. Carol hooked her legs around the brunette's shoulders, feeling as if Therese were holding her very existence between her hands.

"Look at me." whispered Therese, as she entered her with her fingers, and Carol managed to do so, wanting to scream, or actually screaming, surrendering all that she was, and yet feeling more complete than ever.

When Therese appeared magically beside her to kiss her, Carol swirled her tongue over the girl's moist lips, tasting herself. She had materialized in an equally magical way in her life -"flung out of space", as she herself had put it-, and she considered it nothing short of miraculous that they had paused long enough to recognize each other, to realize that they had found each other, so that, when they had looked at each other across the crowded restaurant of the Oak Room, it was as if their fretful souls had rested at last, saying "Oh, there she is. Finally."

"My love," she murmured, stroking the corner of Therese's mouth with her own lips as she uttered the words.


	3. Afterword

Therese

Therese collected her hair the best she could and tied it up in a ponytail, since it was getting long enough to swoop from behind her ear and fall over her face when she looked straight down. She sidestepped a curtain of negatives dangling from a skirt hanger and ducked under the bow- shaped clothesline where she'd hung a number of photographs to dry, for the room was so cluttered that she had to move around by way of avoiding everything in it. In truth, her darkroom was the apartment's other bathroom, a tiny one, which Carol had relinquished so that she could have a place of her own to develop her photography.

Resting her forearms on the edge of the sink and her chin on top of them, Therese waited several minutes before using her pliers to pluck the last of the pictures and rinse it clean of chemicals in the shower. She pinned it to the clothesline with the others and tilted her head slightly to the right, examining them one by one in the red protectiveness of the safelight. There was a palpable, languid contentment in the snapshots she'd taken during their friends' visits: Abby clutching her glass against her chest and leaning into Shirley, her face animated by the conversation; Shirley with her legs folded and her arm resting on the back of the sofa, the perfect image of relaxation; and Carol with her hand raised in mid-gesture, filling the air with smoke spirals from her cigarette, and looking at the other two over the brim of her glass. Therese felt a restful sense of victory, a quiet joyfulness over the finished product, for she believed she had managed to align the camera lens with her eye, with her perception of things.

Her attention then focused on the very last photograph she'd developed, which was the one Abby had taken, and there was an echo of the mild shock she'd felt before, when she'd seen it as a grey and white square floating inside a tray of liquid. It was decidedly peculiar, seeing herself as an image ingrained on paper, an approximation to the way other people might perceive her, since she'd never had any interest in taking her own picture. On top of that, she was now aware of what her face looked like when she was looking at Carol, whose hair appeared as an almost radiant blur.

She turned off the light, pulled out the towel she had earlier stuffed under the door in order to have complete darkness, and returned to the bedroom. The first signs of daylight were filtering inside through the curtains, in the form of diverse traffic sounds and a bluish hue which suggested –more than illuminated- the shape of the bed and the woman it contained. Shedding her robe, Therese climbed into bed and curled up on her side, gazing at a dormant, equally naked Carol. She was debating whether to scoot closer and risk waking her up when the woman spoke without opening her eyes, her voice thick with sleep.

"Therese."

"Yes," Therese said, not questioning, but affirming. The way her name sounded on Carol's lips was unvaryingly thrilling to her. "Morning."

"Don't 'morning' me," Carol blinked her eyes open and cleared her throat, polishing it to a somewhat scolding tone. "Where were you?"

"You know."

"My little busy bee." The woman's pretend seriousness finally morphed into a smile, and she brought a hand to Therese's cheek. "Will you show me?"

"Of course." It made her smile, the way Carol treated her photography as a serious thing, potentiating it, and not only by giving her a permanent space to work on it or by buying her roll film periodically. At the very beginning, she had asked if Therese wanted to be a photographer, never labelling it as a mere pastime, and had wished to see her work, even if it the quality of her pictures had been pretty mediocre.

Her fingertips trailed up Carol's arm and her shoulder, lightly, as she would stroke the keys of a piano, and then down her breast. Finding it impossible not to accompany the downward direction of her hand with her mouth, Therese submerged under the covers and nipped, sucked, and licked every inch of her path, effortlessly adapting to the squirming, swaying motions of her terrain, which was Carol's body. She would gladly spend hours on top of hours with her face between Carol's legs, pouring all of her senses into it, moaning at the taste of her wetness when she swirled and flicked her tongue over and over her clit, or entering her sometimes with her tongue, sometimes with her fingers, or feeling about to cry out and climax when Carol gripped the back of her hair with her fist and shook from head to toe.

Biting her way up Carol's thigh, she heard how the woman yelped and chuckled in pleasurable surprise. "If that alarm clock rings right now, I swear..."

* * *

Carol

Carol entered the apartment and dropped her keys in the little silver tray on the entrance console table. She disentangled herself from her beige coat and marched down the corridor without taking off her sunglasses. Releasing the deep sigh she must have been holding all the way back home, she called out Therese's name and, when the response came, she followed it blindly into the living room. Her exhaustion felt physical, but it was emotional: a byproduct of having to stand in the middle of the street while her daughter skipped away from her and jumped into the backseat of a car driven by a chauffeur. She'd waited until the car disappeared from view and then looked down at the handkerchief she'd used to wipe Rindy's chocolate whiskers, still in her hand.

The living room was warm and inviting, with its subtle illumination and its simplicity. It was certainly more functional than any other place Carol had inhabited, which she'd come to consider as a positive aspect: the less vacuous accessorizing around her, the less she felt like a not-quite-real being among a menagerie of nonliving things. She slapped her gloves against her palm, dropped them on the coffee table, and let herself fall on the sofa, spread-eagled. Through the lenses of her sunglasses, which made everything appear within the color scheme of toasted lager, she saw Therese coming towards her with a full tumbler in her hand and a concerned expression on her face, for the girl knew that she usually came back in a state after spending time with Rindy.

Sitting up to make room for Therese, Carol accepted the drink, but immediately set it down on the coffee table; her primary urgency was leaning into the person sitting right next to her. Therese took off her sunglasses with utmost delicacy and surrounded her with her arms. Carol squeezed back, only harder, for she needed to feel that she wasn't made of glass, that she wasn't going to break. Appearing to understand this, Therese raked her fingers up and down her column, and Carol couldn't help but emit a small moan of approval.

"You're wonderful."

"I wish I could do more," Therese said, softly. "Or, anything at all, really."

"You are." Carol propped herself up and kissed first the girl's lips and then her forehead. She could understand the frustration of believing one was unable to help, specifically in Therese's case, but the truth was that she did help, simply by being there. Just as being there for each other had made a huge difference in the past, it continued to be as important in the present.

She plopped open her cigarette case, glanced around for a lighter, and noticed that there was a fan-like spread of photographs on the coffee table. After asking for permission with a questioning glance, Carol slid the pile closer to them. She examined them in complete silence -as she generally did-, with Therese's head resting on her shoulder, sharing a cigarette with her, and taking sips of whiskey. One shouldn't touch them, she knew, and she refrained from doing so, handling them by the edges, but Therese's pictures felt -for lack of a better word- so tactile. So real. One had the impression that any observer watching that series of vignettes only had to reach out to be privy to their blissful domesticity, and even join in their laughter.

"I'm not sure if this is a good time…" Therese began, "but I've got something for you."

Raising her eyebrows in surprise, Carol's eyes followed the brunette around the room (the room she'd managed to portray so accurately as a home) as she pulled a square parcel from behind the record player. It was roughly the size of a record but, when Therese handed it to her, Carol found it considerably heavier.

"What is it?" she asked, finding it impossible not to smile, especially with the girl bobbing up and down on the sofa, gesturing for her to go ahead. It reminded her of that first Christmas present and their giddiness at the beginning of their road trip.

Carol stripped off the glossy, red wrapping paper and remained completely still for a long time. Between her hands, an impeccably beautiful silver frame surrounding a photograph. Shot from a different point of view than the other pictures, it was a snapshot of the two of them, comfortably sprawled on the loveseat. Recognizing it as the one Abby had taken at her request, Carol couldn't help but press her fingertips to the glass, over the image of Therese's sweet, enamored face looking at her, the expression she saw every day captured forever. Her eyes then focused on her own image: holding Therese tightly, with her head thrown back and caught in mid laughter, her expression limpid, relaxed as she'd never seen it – not before the mirror, and certainly not in any past photographs, before Therese.

Lastly, she noticed that the frame was engraved: a thin rectangle in its base read the words "Easy Living" in cursive. She traced them with her finger and turned to Therese. There was a flicker of insecurity in the girl's face, which Carol understood, taking into account her wrecked state upon arriving home. One could argue that this wasn't "easy living" at all, and that referencing their song was somewhat naïve on Therese's part. But Carol had never seen herself like that; it was a far cry from the framed photographs which sat on most people's mantels: usually stiff, wooden portraits of a stuffy, constrained ambiance.

Sitting back on the sofa, Carol set the picture down on her lap and squeezed Therese's shoulders, wishing to reassure her. She recognized the charged warmth in her eyes, and felt her own eyes getting shiny. "I love it, Therese."

"I love you," Therese said, with the easiness and clarity with which she always said it.

That picture, that instance of "easy living" was about living truthfully, as truthfully as she could, and Carol knew that her journey wasn't over: whatever it was -whether she could one day spend as much time with Rindy as she wanted or not-, it was a journey she would undertake with Therese.

"I love you," Carol said, leaning in for a kiss.


End file.
